How does one know oneself and others? An empirical study of social actions involving one focal person with a disability and his consociates

This study investigates how a particular group of Americans create themselves as persons and selves in daily practice. The focus is on the constituting actions and subjects' own interpretations. To access actual lived experiences I chose auto-ethnographic and grounded theory methods. The universe of inquiry was determined by one focal person, an American middle class male, and 28 consociates who were witnesses and co-creators of personhood at different times, places, and occasions. The data obtained consisted of multifaceted, polyvocal descriptions and interpretations of the constituting actions, ingredients, and creators of personhood and selfhood. Analysis included participants' exegeses and critical assessment of their own practices. I used processual concepts to analyze the socially transforming and positioning dynamics of quotidian practices. The participants recognized themselves to be permeable persons who transmit to, exchange with, and absorb in various ways from others. With their social actions they continually positioned and defined themselves together which led me to understand the equivalence of social processes and social structure. Personal change was experienced across space, time, and situations but balanced with continuity-creating stabilizing bonds, repetitive practices, and ascriptions of perduring capacities and essences. "Private selves" and "public persons" were interchangeable and conjointly created to protect continuity of togetherness. Selfhood emerged as totally social actions which involved body, emotions, cognitions, religious sentiments, and social others. When feeling close, creating bonds of solidarity and trust, and making love, selfhood became sociocentric, interpenetrating, and dissolved in union with others. By closing out others, participants stabilized selfhood, created otherness, and rendered others incomplete or disabled. I related micro-processes with long-term and large-scale processes based on participants involvements in continuing social worlds and my own evaluation of explanatory models. Selfhood is experienced personhood, socially created, and continuously emergent. The bounded, individualistic "self" is a hypercognized synthesis of one among several social processes. A focus on "the individual" person yields an incomplete understanding of lived personhood. Opposing individual to society is unwarranted since personhood and quality of sociality are created with the same social actions. Authorship of incompleteness and disablements lies with persons and their actions.